Border Patrol Sweep Sparks Outcry Over Police-INS Project

Latino and community groups Tuesday denounced arrests by U.S. Border Patrol agents of hundreds of suspected illegal aliens Monday and questioned whether immigration officials should accompany Santa Ana police in their crackdown on drug sales in largely Latino neighborhoods.

Organizations ranging from the League of United Latin American Citizens to neighborhood watch block groups and city officials criticized the Border Patrol’s Monday morning sweep through Orange County in which 342 suspected illegal aliens were apprehended. A Border Patrol spokesman defended the raids as routine and legal.

Curb Drug Trafficking

But some Latino and community group spokesmen went beyond criticizing Monday’s raids and called for cancellation of the federal Immigration and Naturalization Service’s participation in the Santa Ana Police Department’s “Swat Hypes” crackdown.

Swat Hypes--an acronym for High Yield Police Enforcement Services--will begin this week and is designed to curb drug trafficking and related crimes. Nevertheless, Santa Ana police said that they still plan to bring INS agents along on Swat Hypes raids at locations where drugs are sold and illegal aliens are known to be present. Deputy Police Chief Gene Hansen said he has been assured by INS District Director Ernest Gustafson that there will be no recurrence of Monday’s widespread immigration arrests during the six-month Swat Hypes program.

Those assurances, however, did not satisfy many group spokesmen who took part in Tuesday’s press conference at the Santa Ana City Council chambers.

“Our organization supports Swat Hypes 100% . . . with one exception: the INS participation,” said Nativo Lopez, spokesman for the immigrant rights organization Hermandad Mexicana Nacional. “The very same neighborhoods where the (Border Patrol) raids occurred yesterday are targeted by Swat Hypes.”

Increasing Opposition

Opposition to INS involvement in the police raids has reached even the Community Oriented Policing (COP) neighborhood watch organizations, said Raul Hernandez and Refugio Mejia, block captains of two COP units and officers of Hermandad Mexicana Nacional.

Until now, no COP groups or other organizations had complained about INS involvement. Deputy Chief Hansen repeated on Tuesday that police will determine whether illegal immigrants are among the suspects at a location before INS agents are invited. That determination will be made, he said, by checking documents such as auto registrations and utility bills and by suspects’ own admissions to undercover narcotic officers.

However, Lopez and others questioned the Police Department’s ability to distinguish between legal resident aliens and undocumented immigrants.

“They (police) are not immigration agents,” Lopez said, “and if INS agents commit errors, what can we expect from police officers in determining who’s undocumented or not?”

Legal Resident Detained

At Tuesday’s press conference, Guadalupe Ochoa, a pregnant resident alien legally in the United States, said through an interpreter that she and her toddler daughter, a U.S. citizen, were pulled off an Orange County Transit District bus Monday morning by Border Patrol agents who refused to believe she was in the country legally. She said that she had left her immigration papers at home.

Ochoa said that she spent about six hours in a detention facility in El Toro before her release. She resides in Orange and has lived in the United States nine years, she said.

But Gene Smithburg, assistant chief patrol agent at the San Diego office of the Border Patrol, said that it is a violation of immigration law not to carry evidence of alien registration, punishable by 30 days in jail and $100 fine.

“This is a ploy that is used by many, many illegal aliens,” Smithburg said. “They claim they are legal (residents) and do not have their documents.”

Moreover, Smithburg said in defending his agents’ sweep through Orange County, “we have the authority to board any conveyance that we believe is transporting aliens and we can go into any public place to perform our duties.”

In San Diego County, he said, large-scale arrests such as Monday’s are nearly daily occurrences.

“It was a smooth, professional operation,” he said.

Santa Ana City Manager Robert Bobb said that he is confident INS agents will be restrained during Swat Hypes. Nevertheless, he vehemently criticized the Border Patrol’s Monday raid.

“All people are welcome to our city,” Bobb said, “no matter what their ethnic background or whether they are here (in the United States) legally or illegally.”

Amin David, spokesman for Los Amigos of Orange County, said that Monday’s Border Patrol raid “wrecks the confidence we have worked so hard to achieve in our neighborhoods” between residents and authorities.

Lopez, meanwhile, predicted that previous public support for INS involvement in the Swat Hypes program will erode.

‘180-Degree Turn-Around’

“I think in the next couple days,” Lopez said, “we’re going to see a turn-around in public opinion of 180 degrees.”

A meeting organized by Hermandad Mexicana Nacional, LULAC, the Hispanic Ministry of the Catholic Diocese of Orange County and other groups will be held at 7 p.m. Wednesday at St. Joseph Parish Hall, 608 Civic Center Drive, to discuss INS involvement in the Swat Hypes police raids.

And Armando Carrasco, LULAC district director for the Orange County area, said that he will raise the concerns he has over INS participation in Swat Hypes raids when his organization’s board of directors meets Saturday. Legal action to halt future INS raids also will be considered at the meeting, he said.